I was so tired this morning that I slept most of the bus ride away. I don’t think I missed much, though, as every time I blearily opened my eyes, the view was the same: more building, more dusty streets, more smoggy air. I guess I’m understanding why the race venues have been in out-of-the-way locations; not good for spectators, perhaps, but better for breathing!
The ride was really long this morning, and the caravan of buses kept stopping and idling in place for up to 15 minutes at a time. I guess there were traffic jams, although we couldn’t see what was going on from the bus windows. At last the bus stopped and the doors opened, and we jumped out to a very exciting scene. There was drumming – a loud, heart-quickening beat – and a few hundred yards away, I could see lion dancers prancing and jumping. There was also a big crowd of people, and we walked the gauntlet of their friendly stares from the bus into the race area enclosure. I stopped, entranced, to watch the lion dancers in their expressive, athletic stampings and jumpings.
This race course was like a typical American criterium, albeit a little longer (about 3K). There were several tight, fast turns; we knew our guys would be more comfortable on this course than any of the Asian riders or even the Europeans. Several of the team directors were grumbling about the danger of the roads, which made me even more confident that GS Mengoni could use its crit experience to advantage.
The team area was right next to a large pond and park area; the pond had a waterfall cascading into it from the high rocks ringing it, and at the top of the high rocks were several small buildings with tiled roofs – the typical Chinese “pagoda” style (I don’t know if this is a correct term, culturally or architecturally) with the corners sloping up like ski jumps. When I went over to a deck under another, larger “pagoda,” near some gates tiled with oyster shells, I took some pictures with some of the other race personnel hanging out there.
I decided to walk around the entire course, since it was in the midst of an interesting town. I left the enclosure, and started to follow the plastic tape cordoning off the street from the spacious sidewalk. It seems that, although this is the most picturesque spot we’ve been since Hong Kong, perhaps tourists aren’t common here; I was stared at ceaselessly as I walked along the street. I again felt a bit like I was walking a gauntlet. I can’t say whether the eyes that followed me were friendly or not. I did see some friendly looks and the occasionally smile, and a few people even called out “Hello!” I wonder if what I perceive as unfriendliness (or perhaps indifference) is really just shyness; maybe the people who have enough English to shout a greeting seem friendly simply because they have the tools to show friendliness.
I stopped at one point to time the gap between a breakaway and the pack, and a young woman standing nearby clicked a picture of me on her cell phone. I felt the tables had been fairly turned, as I’m always surreptitiously snapping photos of people here. So I smiled at her and gestured for her to join me in the picture and have her friend, holding a baby, take the photo. I made some happy faces at the baby, and the little darlin’ grasped my finger in his fist, and then held out his arms to me. So I picked him up, and they took more photos of me holding the baby. I wished my camera hadn’t been out of batteries!
There were lots of stores selling bolts of cloth, rags, yarn, and other textile goods. I never did find out whether it was the textile district of the town, or why else there may have been so many cloth vendors.
I talked for a while with a photographer taking photos along the course (for Guandong Television, I found later when he gave me his card). I tried to explain to him why I thought Amaurys had a good chance of winning today, but I’m not sure he knew enough about cycling to understand what I meant.
When it came close to the finish, I climbed a barricade near a tree and stood there leaning out to see the sprint come in. I realized I could see Pollo at about the 100M sign, and could read his body language to know whether Amaurys had a chance at the sprint. And it looked good – Pollo leaning forward, tense and excited – until maybe 10 seconds before the riders came into sight. Then Pollo’s body sagged; more seconds passed, and I saw a single rider come across the line, arms raised. Turns out there had been a crash just after the last turn. Amaurys, who was maybe in 4th or 5th position, right on the wheel of the Danish rider who’s won 2 races already, didn’t go down when the Dane crashed, but of course was thrown off and his sprint derailed. Such are the vagaries of bike racing – sometimes you do everything right and are in the exact right place…until that place suddenly becomes wrong!
Unfortunately Simon, the young Hong Kong rider with Mengoni for the Tour, didn’t finish today’s stage, so the team will be down to 3 riders tomorrow. Gee – it’s been a tougher race, attrition-wise, than I think the organizers intended.
Fassi and the other Bici Racing boys took care of our cooler and a bag with race supplies, and I borrowed the spare bike to ride to the hotel with the other guys. We wound through some narrow streets lined with old-looking buildings with tiled roofs. The tiles are like half cylinders, cut vertically, perhaps originally terra cotta colored, but now grey to black.
After finding the hotel and having lunch (more disappointing food; I keep hoping for a return to the kind of buffet we enjoyed in the Shenzhen hotel, but to no avail), Pollo and I went out for a ride. What Pollo calls this type of riding is a “paseo:” more a meander than a purposeful expedition, and definitely not any kind of real exercise. We started off down the busy street, accustomed by now to the free-for-all that is traffic in China. Within a fewblocks, we came to a small bridge over a river. There was a single lane in each direction for cars, and a wide bike and pedestrian path on each side as well. Of course, the scooters claimed the bike/ped side of the divider, but still it was nice to have a brief respite from cars. On the other side of the river was a bustling commercial zone. First we went left, cruising along a one-way street and gazing to one side at the merchandise and to the other at the river. We saw some small birds in bamboo cages, presumably for sale. I saw a bamboo child’s seat for a bicycle like one I’d admired earlier while walking around the race course, and may have bought it if I’d remembered to bring any money.
We eventually turned down a side street to get back, in a roundabout way, to the bridge. Down this side street, and the alleys off it, were a lot more old-looking buildings, and we turned into a few of them to see what we could see. Coasting along the bumpy streets, we caught glimpses of women cooking over a huge wok on top of some kind of brazier; men and women playing cards or mah-jong; women washing clothes in basins; all the little snapshots of everyday life that are so fascinating to the outsider.
Coming out into a wider street again, there was a produce market…right there on the street, literally. Vendors had spread their tarps out on the street, and laid their fresh greens right on top. I snapped a photo of one particularly vibrant corner, and the vendor smiled widely to be the object of my picture. This seemed a friendly place; sure we felt like we stuck out like sore thumbs, but somehow it wasn’t a bad kind of sticking out.
Once back on the other side of the river we went the other direction and explored a park. There was green space aplenty, with other attractions such as a big boat in the middle of a lawn, and little bridges over waterways with the odd koi fish hanging as if suspended in the murky water. We even came across a modern art museum! I would have liked to have gone in, but it was just closing.
Eventually we made our way back to the busy little bridge over the river onto the main street on which our hotel was located. We washed the team’s bikes (well, Pollo mostly did, while I fetched bikes from upstairs and cleaned the chains when he was finished with the rest of the bikes). Two other teams’ mechanics loaned Pollo detergent for the frames and WD-40 for the drivetrains. One of them even lent us his bike stand to make the work easier! I have seen a gradual softening on almost all the teams’ parts, with staff and riders alike becoming friendlier to members of other teams.
After dinner, the whole team (besides Simon) went out to get bicycle rickshaws to go to the pedestrian mall Pollo and I had seen earlier just across the river a few blocks from the hotel. With much merriment we discovered that the rickshaw “driver” of Alberto, Amaurys, and Eugene’s rig had secret assistance from a motor! Our driver was really pedaling, which was why he had wanted to take only 2 of us and the other guy had accepted 3!
We walked around a bit at this mall, peering into jewelry, clothing, and accessories stores. Eugene and I were on a mission to find T-shirts with nonsense English words on them, and we found some very good specimens. I even ended up buying two. One states boldly, with rhinestones to underline the point, “Rear Your Fair.” The other, with a small embroidered teddy bear, says: “You are my badtiul poen girl GROSSIE Starletaysownoietenresdfo FOR U broowny SUPER not sweeter your jea GIRLS.” I feel compelled to clarify that I’m not making fun of the Chinese for their occasionally tenuous grasp of the English language; after all – I can barely say “Thank you” correctly in Mandarin, and the rest of both that language and Cantonese is a complete mystery to me. It’s just downright funny to wonder where some of the nonsense words come from. Randomly computer generated, with some legitimate words thrown in? (This whole subject is also a bit illuminating with regards to the prominence English – and American culture and style more generally – has in China presently.)
Zhongshan ended up being my favorite city so far in China, not that we really deeply explored any of them. However, from the very superficial glimpses we got of the cities the race has passed through, this one seems the most complete: bustling commerce, tranquil green space (with a river to boot), lots of pedestrian-only space, and some older buildings amidst the new development.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Foshan Stage
The morning brought another long transfer to the next stage. When we arrived, it was at the parking lot of a huge, modern sports complex, and again there was no one around. Oddly, the stage’s sponsor, which appeared to be a folding bike company (Qi Le Duo), had a big booth with lots of sample bikes. I don’t know who was supposed to test ride or look at them. There were some BMX riders who were there to add some excitement (for the nonexistent spectators, I guess), and some of them got hold of the folding bikes and put them through some pretty serious paces, jumping the plywood ramps and pallet piles.
This was a longer circuit of 9K, so I got a ride in the media van to the second pit, located halfway around the course. There Pollo and I hung out and listened to scraps of information coming over the race radio. Eugene was again in an early break (with a Russian and another guy), but they were reeled in by the relentless controlling pressure of the race leader’s Hong Kong Pro Cycling team.
I even napped a little in the warm sun, but when the race had less than 2 laps to go, and mechanical support was no longer allowed (with a free lap), Pollo took off on the spare bike back to the start, and I started walking. I trotted along, passing policemen every 200 yards or so; some of them were sitting on the sidewalk or the curb, and many of them smiled in return to my nodded greeting. The course was almost entirely deserted besides them; so it was unclear what /who the police were keeping the course clear of.
I passed one group of spectators; they looked like construction workers, and there was a group of about 15 of them leaning on a barricade on one corner of the course. I was all the way on the opposite corner, and I had almost turned the corner when one of the guys shouted, “Hello!” I slowed my trot down enough to raise a hand slightly in greeting, and the whole crowd of them erupted into (what I interpreted as) happy laughter. So I raised my hand higher and waved as I disappeared around the corner, which elicited another round of merriment. I reflected on the fact that this was the first time in China that I’d been greeted in this way by a group of men, and how much more polite they seemed than their catcalling US counterparts!
I took a shortcut across a park to get back to the sports complex to watch the finish, and I was sweating by the time I jogged to the finish line banner. I was there just in time to see Amaurys sprint across the line in 3rd place! So the post-race scene was very different today as Amaurys attended the awards ceremony (as did I as semi-official team photogtrapher). The M.C. wanted to interview him about the finish, so it was a three-way translation (English to Spanish to English to Chinese) to get Amaurys’ comments to the assembled media. Unfortunately, there weren’t any spectators, even at the finish.
The hotel was a bit too far to ride, so the buses were loaded and we all piled in once again. It was about 3 p.m. when we arrived; just in time for a late lunch. Pollo and I decided to ride, and as Fassi wanted to ride as well, we waited for him so we could all go together. While we waited at the front entrance of the hotel, the bellhops stared with interest at the bikes. They shyly gestured that they’d like to pick them up (to see how much they weighed, presumably). We handed them over and made signals that they should try them out. They jumped on and did a few turns around the valet parking area, grinning like crazy. The responsiveness surprised them, but for all the differences between our bikes and the standard, heavy steel rigs they were probably used to, they rode the racing bikes with facility.
Fassi joined us, and we took off in the direction recommended by the bellhops. It was a huge, heavily-trafficked boulevard, with trucks and scooters (lots of those) screaming past with piercing honks and choking exhaust. The people riding the scooters turned their heads and stared as they went past, and I was reminded of my experience on the Autopista Duarte in the Dominican Republic. I asked Fassi why there weren’t more bikes here; although we’ve seen quite a few, carrying loads unbelievable in bulk and weight, it’s nothing like I expected after hearing Pollo’s impressions of his last trip to Shanghai and Hong Kong 2 years ago. Fassi replied that here in the South, bikes aren’t so popular anymore; partly because of the influence that Hong Kong culture has on South China, and the view that bicycles are for the poor. Now, it seems that motorized scooters are replacing bikes as the mass mode of transportation.
We rode for perhaps as hour or so through streets with incredibly heavy pollution. It was like a fog we pushed through; a haze of particulates turning everything brownish gray. We turned off onto a quieter side street, but the dust and smog was just as thick. At the end of the road, we came to a gate, with workers trickling out. The sign on the wall said it was an aluminum products factory.
The ride back to the hotel was even crazier, since dusk had fallen. Now, the scooters, bikes, and pedestrians on the cycle path paralleling the highway weaved in the same complicated ballet, but with the additional element of surprise as shapes appeared, zooming, out of the smoggy dark.
Our hotel faced this busy highway, so all night long there was the honking and braking of an L.A. freeway at rush hour. Also, our beds were incredibly hard: a Chinese phenomenon that actually agrees well with me when not taken quite to the extreme. (At the Guangzhou University hotel, the “mattresses” were actually box springs, and if I dared to turn onto my side, the springs dug into my shoulder!) Anyway, I think I slept decently, if not wonderfully. Somehow these days of bus travel and hanging around race venues make me almost as tired as if I were racing myself…
This was a longer circuit of 9K, so I got a ride in the media van to the second pit, located halfway around the course. There Pollo and I hung out and listened to scraps of information coming over the race radio. Eugene was again in an early break (with a Russian and another guy), but they were reeled in by the relentless controlling pressure of the race leader’s Hong Kong Pro Cycling team.
I even napped a little in the warm sun, but when the race had less than 2 laps to go, and mechanical support was no longer allowed (with a free lap), Pollo took off on the spare bike back to the start, and I started walking. I trotted along, passing policemen every 200 yards or so; some of them were sitting on the sidewalk or the curb, and many of them smiled in return to my nodded greeting. The course was almost entirely deserted besides them; so it was unclear what /who the police were keeping the course clear of.
I passed one group of spectators; they looked like construction workers, and there was a group of about 15 of them leaning on a barricade on one corner of the course. I was all the way on the opposite corner, and I had almost turned the corner when one of the guys shouted, “Hello!” I slowed my trot down enough to raise a hand slightly in greeting, and the whole crowd of them erupted into (what I interpreted as) happy laughter. So I raised my hand higher and waved as I disappeared around the corner, which elicited another round of merriment. I reflected on the fact that this was the first time in China that I’d been greeted in this way by a group of men, and how much more polite they seemed than their catcalling US counterparts!
I took a shortcut across a park to get back to the sports complex to watch the finish, and I was sweating by the time I jogged to the finish line banner. I was there just in time to see Amaurys sprint across the line in 3rd place! So the post-race scene was very different today as Amaurys attended the awards ceremony (as did I as semi-official team photogtrapher). The M.C. wanted to interview him about the finish, so it was a three-way translation (English to Spanish to English to Chinese) to get Amaurys’ comments to the assembled media. Unfortunately, there weren’t any spectators, even at the finish.
The hotel was a bit too far to ride, so the buses were loaded and we all piled in once again. It was about 3 p.m. when we arrived; just in time for a late lunch. Pollo and I decided to ride, and as Fassi wanted to ride as well, we waited for him so we could all go together. While we waited at the front entrance of the hotel, the bellhops stared with interest at the bikes. They shyly gestured that they’d like to pick them up (to see how much they weighed, presumably). We handed them over and made signals that they should try them out. They jumped on and did a few turns around the valet parking area, grinning like crazy. The responsiveness surprised them, but for all the differences between our bikes and the standard, heavy steel rigs they were probably used to, they rode the racing bikes with facility.
Fassi joined us, and we took off in the direction recommended by the bellhops. It was a huge, heavily-trafficked boulevard, with trucks and scooters (lots of those) screaming past with piercing honks and choking exhaust. The people riding the scooters turned their heads and stared as they went past, and I was reminded of my experience on the Autopista Duarte in the Dominican Republic. I asked Fassi why there weren’t more bikes here; although we’ve seen quite a few, carrying loads unbelievable in bulk and weight, it’s nothing like I expected after hearing Pollo’s impressions of his last trip to Shanghai and Hong Kong 2 years ago. Fassi replied that here in the South, bikes aren’t so popular anymore; partly because of the influence that Hong Kong culture has on South China, and the view that bicycles are for the poor. Now, it seems that motorized scooters are replacing bikes as the mass mode of transportation.
We rode for perhaps as hour or so through streets with incredibly heavy pollution. It was like a fog we pushed through; a haze of particulates turning everything brownish gray. We turned off onto a quieter side street, but the dust and smog was just as thick. At the end of the road, we came to a gate, with workers trickling out. The sign on the wall said it was an aluminum products factory.
The ride back to the hotel was even crazier, since dusk had fallen. Now, the scooters, bikes, and pedestrians on the cycle path paralleling the highway weaved in the same complicated ballet, but with the additional element of surprise as shapes appeared, zooming, out of the smoggy dark.
Our hotel faced this busy highway, so all night long there was the honking and braking of an L.A. freeway at rush hour. Also, our beds were incredibly hard: a Chinese phenomenon that actually agrees well with me when not taken quite to the extreme. (At the Guangzhou University hotel, the “mattresses” were actually box springs, and if I dared to turn onto my side, the springs dug into my shoulder!) Anyway, I think I slept decently, if not wonderfully. Somehow these days of bus travel and hanging around race venues make me almost as tired as if I were racing myself…
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Guanzhou University Stage
We had to leave our 5-star Dongguan hotel after just one night – very sad. I was in a big rush this morning to try and take advantage of the free, fast internet to a) update my blog, b) call home to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and c) call the airline to continue the quest to change Pollo’s ticket. However, I couldn’t access the blog website. Eugene had said that he’d tried the last couple nights and had not been able to either. It didn’t occur to me until I spoke to my parents later that blogspot.com may be restricted by the Chinese government. It’s so easy to forget, with all the industry and evidence of capitalism that we’ve seen so far, that this is still a Communist country with major restrictions of liberty and information. Of course, most of these cities are part of Special Economic Zones, where I guess more free press (and other freedom of information) may be allowed than elsewhere in the country.
Our 1.5 hour transfer today wasn’t very interesting scenery-wise, except for some great pictures of vegetable fields against a backdrop of huge industrial buildings. Sort of like bits of Watsonville transplanted to San Jose. Also, we saw orchards of fruit trees all hung with plastic bags. We imagined the bags were protecting the fruit, or hastening the ripening, perhaps? We arrived at the University in Guanzhou. There were lots of apartment buildings all around, with clothes hanging from the balconies as usual. Not many people, but a lot of big, impressive buildings. It was sunny for the first time since Sai Kung, and beautifully warm. I almost wished I had shorts on.
After the start, Pollo rode and I walked to the second pit, located halfway around the course (which was an oval of 4K on the curving university roads. On the way, I stopped and sniffed the air, trying to locate the elusive floral scent that I’ve smelled from time to time since we arrived in the country. It’s the most beautiful scent, but I can’t associate it with any particular flower. Anyway, I was standing and sniffing, and a young man on a bike stopped and said, “Hello.” I tried to ask where the smell was coming from, but he was definitely confused by my question. He asked where I was going and I pointed over to the mechanics’ area with the wheels. “Oh,” he said, “I thought you maybe lost.” I suppose I looked lost, standing there sniffing the air with a goofy smile on my face! I asked him if he was a university student, and he said that yes, he was studying at the College of Technology. After our brief conversation, he pedaled off on the very old bike he was riding, and I was left to reflect on the incredible hospitality and kindness of the Chinese people we’ve met so far.
The pit area was right next to a walled complex which was identified by a sign as a “Military Administrative Zone.” There were 3 snallish chow-dogs guarding it and barking if anyone got too close. The police here are omnipresent, but though they are stern, they are not unapproachable. Yesterday we saw them enjoying their lunch while guarding the course, after a truck delivered boxes of food.
One thing that keeps striking me about China is the cleanliness. The streets and sidewalks are absolutely spotless. Everywhere one goes, there are women (always women) sweeping up the tiniest pieces of litter into their makeshift dustpans. Despite all the problems one hears about, I imagine Beijing will be better prepared to host the Olympics than a lot of other big cities with infrastructure challenges. The level of volunteer (and paid) mobilization here is phenomenal for this cycling event.
Eugene was briefly in a break of 4 or 5 riders, and got second in an intermediate sprint…don’t tell the Danish guys, but I think he’s gunning for the points! Alberto was well-positioned to get in a break, but it didn’t look promising for one to succeed today. Everything was being brought back. For all that, when it came to the sprint, it arrived in a big bunch with no lead-outs, and Amaurys got boxed in again. However, his placing today (top 10) shows a gradual improvement…we still hope he can pull out a podium or even a win by the end of the week. Unfortunately Simon (the Hong Kong rider with Mengoni for this race) crashed with just over 2 laps to go, and bruised his knee and scraped his ear. Hopefully he won’t have any major soreness tomorrow.
The hotel was again close to the race start/finish, so the guys rode, and I walked, to the lobby. There we collected our bags (I am starting to wish I had packed much more lightly) and trooped up to the rooms. Lunch was in a canteen/dining hall (part of the university) a 5-minute walk away. Accustomed as I’d become to the delicious food at the hotels thus far, the cafeteria fare was a comedown. The only really yummy thing was the choy (I’m not sure exactly it’s name, but it’s a bright green vegetable with a few florets like broccoli, with tiny yellow flowers). That’s consistently delicious everywhere I’ve eaten it in China. Maybe that’s the secret to Chinese health. I have definitely noticed a lack of obesity here – or even chubbiness – compared to the U.S. There are 2 race organizers or officials who are fat; they wouldn’t even stand out in the U.S., but here they look absolutely enormous.
I wanted to go for a ride again, but Pollo’s agenda was a nap, and so without a riding buddy I resigned myself to catching up on internet stuff and washing some clothes (by hand in the sink). I asked in the hotel lobby about a washing machine, finally resorting to drawing a picture to get my point across, but was told there was none.
As we walked to dinner later on, I finally found the source of the elusive, lovely scent. It’s a bush with tiny white flowers. I’ll take a photo tomorrow when it’s light out, and try to find out what its name is.
We caught highlights of the race on local TV tonight, which was fun. Meanwhile, I cursed the slow speed of my internet connection as I tried to get my blog up online…but at the same time was thankful that the proxy server (showed to me by someone who shall remain nameless in case the Chinese government should find and nail him) allows me access to the blog at all.
Our 1.5 hour transfer today wasn’t very interesting scenery-wise, except for some great pictures of vegetable fields against a backdrop of huge industrial buildings. Sort of like bits of Watsonville transplanted to San Jose. Also, we saw orchards of fruit trees all hung with plastic bags. We imagined the bags were protecting the fruit, or hastening the ripening, perhaps? We arrived at the University in Guanzhou. There were lots of apartment buildings all around, with clothes hanging from the balconies as usual. Not many people, but a lot of big, impressive buildings. It was sunny for the first time since Sai Kung, and beautifully warm. I almost wished I had shorts on.
After the start, Pollo rode and I walked to the second pit, located halfway around the course (which was an oval of 4K on the curving university roads. On the way, I stopped and sniffed the air, trying to locate the elusive floral scent that I’ve smelled from time to time since we arrived in the country. It’s the most beautiful scent, but I can’t associate it with any particular flower. Anyway, I was standing and sniffing, and a young man on a bike stopped and said, “Hello.” I tried to ask where the smell was coming from, but he was definitely confused by my question. He asked where I was going and I pointed over to the mechanics’ area with the wheels. “Oh,” he said, “I thought you maybe lost.” I suppose I looked lost, standing there sniffing the air with a goofy smile on my face! I asked him if he was a university student, and he said that yes, he was studying at the College of Technology. After our brief conversation, he pedaled off on the very old bike he was riding, and I was left to reflect on the incredible hospitality and kindness of the Chinese people we’ve met so far.
The pit area was right next to a walled complex which was identified by a sign as a “Military Administrative Zone.” There were 3 snallish chow-dogs guarding it and barking if anyone got too close. The police here are omnipresent, but though they are stern, they are not unapproachable. Yesterday we saw them enjoying their lunch while guarding the course, after a truck delivered boxes of food.
One thing that keeps striking me about China is the cleanliness. The streets and sidewalks are absolutely spotless. Everywhere one goes, there are women (always women) sweeping up the tiniest pieces of litter into their makeshift dustpans. Despite all the problems one hears about, I imagine Beijing will be better prepared to host the Olympics than a lot of other big cities with infrastructure challenges. The level of volunteer (and paid) mobilization here is phenomenal for this cycling event.
Eugene was briefly in a break of 4 or 5 riders, and got second in an intermediate sprint…don’t tell the Danish guys, but I think he’s gunning for the points! Alberto was well-positioned to get in a break, but it didn’t look promising for one to succeed today. Everything was being brought back. For all that, when it came to the sprint, it arrived in a big bunch with no lead-outs, and Amaurys got boxed in again. However, his placing today (top 10) shows a gradual improvement…we still hope he can pull out a podium or even a win by the end of the week. Unfortunately Simon (the Hong Kong rider with Mengoni for this race) crashed with just over 2 laps to go, and bruised his knee and scraped his ear. Hopefully he won’t have any major soreness tomorrow.
The hotel was again close to the race start/finish, so the guys rode, and I walked, to the lobby. There we collected our bags (I am starting to wish I had packed much more lightly) and trooped up to the rooms. Lunch was in a canteen/dining hall (part of the university) a 5-minute walk away. Accustomed as I’d become to the delicious food at the hotels thus far, the cafeteria fare was a comedown. The only really yummy thing was the choy (I’m not sure exactly it’s name, but it’s a bright green vegetable with a few florets like broccoli, with tiny yellow flowers). That’s consistently delicious everywhere I’ve eaten it in China. Maybe that’s the secret to Chinese health. I have definitely noticed a lack of obesity here – or even chubbiness – compared to the U.S. There are 2 race organizers or officials who are fat; they wouldn’t even stand out in the U.S., but here they look absolutely enormous.
I wanted to go for a ride again, but Pollo’s agenda was a nap, and so without a riding buddy I resigned myself to catching up on internet stuff and washing some clothes (by hand in the sink). I asked in the hotel lobby about a washing machine, finally resorting to drawing a picture to get my point across, but was told there was none.
As we walked to dinner later on, I finally found the source of the elusive, lovely scent. It’s a bush with tiny white flowers. I’ll take a photo tomorrow when it’s light out, and try to find out what its name is.
We caught highlights of the race on local TV tonight, which was fun. Meanwhile, I cursed the slow speed of my internet connection as I tried to get my blog up online…but at the same time was thankful that the proxy server (showed to me by someone who shall remain nameless in case the Chinese government should find and nail him) allows me access to the blog at all.
Dongguan Guancheng (Stage 2)
I was sorry to leave Shenzhen so soon; I enjoyed the hotel and the bustling street life outside. But stage 2 is in Dongguan, so we boarded the buses at 8:30 and were soon en route. After a nearly 2 hour ride, during which the most notable sight was the impressive large-scale topiary in the road medians and verges, we arrived at the race start. Dongguan appears to be a very new city. The Dongguan Exhibition Center, where the race was centered, is a modern marvel of steel, glass, and concrete. At 10:30 in the morning, the very wide streets were very, very empty. The course was a short (4K) rectangle, and the streets connecting one side of the course to the other were closed to traffic, with police guards making sure the course was secure. There was something eerie about the modern aspect of the urban architecture, the perfection of the flower beds in front of the huge buildings, the emptiness of the streets, and the solemn police presence.
The race start had a different feel altogether. Although there weren’t crowds of people watching as there had been in Shenzhen, there was a company of little kids on bikes waiting their turn to lead the racers to the start line. These little tykes, about 4-5 years old, were all in matching suits and Santa hats, and had balloons tied to their matching blue bikes and Olympic ring flags attached to their handlebars. They were adorable, of course, but the most amazing thing was how well-behaved they were. They all waited stoically in their lines, hardly wiggling at all. When one little boy in the from row rolled forward about a foot, a woman came from the sidelines and spoke to him sternly for about 3 minutes. He blinked and nodded very seriously and scooted himself back to the line, and didn’t move out of place by so much as a whisker from then on.
When the starting horn blew, the racers streamed by on the sides of the children’s formation, and the race was on. Pollo and I went along one of the deserted streets to the other side of the course where the second mechanical pit was located, so we could offer a spare bike or wheels to any Mengoni rider who might need them.
I would have preferred to explore the city a bit, but everything looked so empty and lifeless, I wouldn’t have known where to walk. So instead I sat on the curb and wrote down some blog entries.
Eugene got in an early break of 4 that was eventually swallowed by the field. Then a pair of riders escaped and was away for a long time, eventually joined by one other. But this break too was consumed with just a few laps to go. When I saw Amaurys in good position with one lap to go, I got really excited because I think he can really compete with these guys in a head-to-head sprint. But unfortunately when the finish came, he was nowhere in the top 15. I guess there was no lead-out, so the sprinters in the front got swarmed by the whole peloton and Amaurys lost his good position.
The hotel was only a few blocks from the start/finish, so all the riders left on their bikes. With our friend Fasi’s help, I loaded our team cooler and all the gear on the bus and proceeded to wait for 20 minutes or so before they took off. We should’ve walked! When we got to the hotel, though, I was very impressed. This place was 5-star. The lobby had a huge aquarium with sea turtles, sharks, and fish swimming around. The elevators had beautiful stone mosaics on the floor, and rosewood panels. The rooms – wow! 12-foot ceilings, an extremely spacious and beautiful furniture. unch was ready. I decided to go easy because Pollo and I wanted to go for a ride after lunch.
We set off, first taking a picture of the hotel in case we got lost and had to ask someone how to get back! We were accompanied for the first few minutes by a couple Portuguese guys riding for the Macau team, but they were going shopping, so we parted ways at a main boulevard. A lot of the street signs have no English names at all, so we just followed our noses. The traffic here is a bit scary; many of the intersections have no traffic signals at all, so turning vehicles just push their way in. The honking and squealing brakes are intense.
We just rode around aimlessly, turning down an interesting alley here and there. We rode down a street that was all plant shops; there were orchids and poinsettias, mums and roses for sale. I liked best the bonsais, some of which were huge! I tried to ask the proprietor of one bonsai place how old one of the plants was, finally pantomiming a bent old person walking with a cane. She nodded, smiling, but couldn’t tell me how many years old it was.
When we got back to the hotel, we took in the view out of our 9th floor window. The number of construction cranes was really amazing. We could also see a plot of land – it looked a bit like a former mine, or a place that had begun to be cleared for a huge building but had been abandoned. It was planted everywhere with green crops in tidy rows. “Wherever there’s a bit of land,” murmured Pollo, “they plant something – anything.”
I had thought it would be nice to swim a bit in the hotel pool, as I haven’t had much exercise lately (and with all the great food, I fear I will be gaining quite a bit of weight!). But the water was so cold that I barely lasted 5 minutes. I couldn’t even swim crawl – the cold made it impossible for me to exhale under water!
Freezing from my cold swim, I jumped into bed to warm up, and was soon so sleepy that I didn’t even want to leave to eat dinner. Figuring it was about time to catch up on sleep (I’ve been skimping since we got here), I elected to stay in bed and enjoyed a nice, long rest. Thus ended my Christmas in China.
The race start had a different feel altogether. Although there weren’t crowds of people watching as there had been in Shenzhen, there was a company of little kids on bikes waiting their turn to lead the racers to the start line. These little tykes, about 4-5 years old, were all in matching suits and Santa hats, and had balloons tied to their matching blue bikes and Olympic ring flags attached to their handlebars. They were adorable, of course, but the most amazing thing was how well-behaved they were. They all waited stoically in their lines, hardly wiggling at all. When one little boy in the from row rolled forward about a foot, a woman came from the sidelines and spoke to him sternly for about 3 minutes. He blinked and nodded very seriously and scooted himself back to the line, and didn’t move out of place by so much as a whisker from then on.
When the starting horn blew, the racers streamed by on the sides of the children’s formation, and the race was on. Pollo and I went along one of the deserted streets to the other side of the course where the second mechanical pit was located, so we could offer a spare bike or wheels to any Mengoni rider who might need them.
I would have preferred to explore the city a bit, but everything looked so empty and lifeless, I wouldn’t have known where to walk. So instead I sat on the curb and wrote down some blog entries.
Eugene got in an early break of 4 that was eventually swallowed by the field. Then a pair of riders escaped and was away for a long time, eventually joined by one other. But this break too was consumed with just a few laps to go. When I saw Amaurys in good position with one lap to go, I got really excited because I think he can really compete with these guys in a head-to-head sprint. But unfortunately when the finish came, he was nowhere in the top 15. I guess there was no lead-out, so the sprinters in the front got swarmed by the whole peloton and Amaurys lost his good position.
The hotel was only a few blocks from the start/finish, so all the riders left on their bikes. With our friend Fasi’s help, I loaded our team cooler and all the gear on the bus and proceeded to wait for 20 minutes or so before they took off. We should’ve walked! When we got to the hotel, though, I was very impressed. This place was 5-star. The lobby had a huge aquarium with sea turtles, sharks, and fish swimming around. The elevators had beautiful stone mosaics on the floor, and rosewood panels. The rooms – wow! 12-foot ceilings, an extremely spacious and beautiful furniture. unch was ready. I decided to go easy because Pollo and I wanted to go for a ride after lunch.
We set off, first taking a picture of the hotel in case we got lost and had to ask someone how to get back! We were accompanied for the first few minutes by a couple Portuguese guys riding for the Macau team, but they were going shopping, so we parted ways at a main boulevard. A lot of the street signs have no English names at all, so we just followed our noses. The traffic here is a bit scary; many of the intersections have no traffic signals at all, so turning vehicles just push their way in. The honking and squealing brakes are intense.
We just rode around aimlessly, turning down an interesting alley here and there. We rode down a street that was all plant shops; there were orchids and poinsettias, mums and roses for sale. I liked best the bonsais, some of which were huge! I tried to ask the proprietor of one bonsai place how old one of the plants was, finally pantomiming a bent old person walking with a cane. She nodded, smiling, but couldn’t tell me how many years old it was.
When we got back to the hotel, we took in the view out of our 9th floor window. The number of construction cranes was really amazing. We could also see a plot of land – it looked a bit like a former mine, or a place that had begun to be cleared for a huge building but had been abandoned. It was planted everywhere with green crops in tidy rows. “Wherever there’s a bit of land,” murmured Pollo, “they plant something – anything.”
I had thought it would be nice to swim a bit in the hotel pool, as I haven’t had much exercise lately (and with all the great food, I fear I will be gaining quite a bit of weight!). But the water was so cold that I barely lasted 5 minutes. I couldn’t even swim crawl – the cold made it impossible for me to exhale under water!
Freezing from my cold swim, I jumped into bed to warm up, and was soon so sleepy that I didn’t even want to leave to eat dinner. Figuring it was about time to catch up on sleep (I’ve been skimping since we got here), I elected to stay in bed and enjoyed a nice, long rest. Thus ended my Christmas in China.
Shenzhen (stage 2) – Christmas Eve
We were up and out of the hotel by 9, to travel by bus to the stage start in Longgua (a district of Shenzhen, I think). Wilson had decided to stay to try to change his ticket to depart.
The 4 buses carrying all the riders, plus the container truck with the bikes, had a police escort all the way to the start. The drive was interesting – we saw lots of huge apartment buildings where it appeared to be washday on Monday, as every single balcony was hung with rows of drying apparel. It’s funny how the small, common things are sometimes the most fascinating to the foreign eye! The driving (which, incidentally, is on the right side of the road as opposed to the left as in Hong Kong) is much more chaotic and aggressive here in China. Our bus driver wore our ears out with loud, prolonged honking, and had to throw the brakes on violently a few times as cars cut in front of him.
The riders’ area at the start was a barricaded area with a tent for each team. I am getting more and more impressed by the organization of this event; while it’s true that there’s a lot of “Hurry up and wait,” the race organizers are doing a tremendous job of getting people and equipment from one spot to another with a relatively small amount of hassle and almost no error. Also, the rider area was secured by police, and legions of red-jacketed workers with “Longhua volunteers” logos stitched on their caps ran around lugging water, manning the Port-A-Potties, etc. It seems that there’s a huge amount of national, regional, and local pride.
The course was a nearly flat loop of 4 kilometers on the streets of Shenzhen Longhua. Once the racers were off, I wandered around for a bit to explore. I went into a bank to try and change Hong Kong dollars into Chinese yuan. I asked someone for an English-speaking clerk, and was led graciously from one person to another until someone who could help me was found. After so much helpful effort on my behalf I felt bad to change me mind, but the pageful of information I would have had to fill out looked so daunting that I decided to forget the money changing for now. Bigger establishments (like the massage place from last night) accept HK dollars anyway, and it would only be for small stuff that it would be useful to have yuan.
I continued to a big supermarket, thinking of buying some running shoes so I could do some jogging from time to time (there’s no time to go for a ride, and my legs and back are starting to ache from lack of exercise). However, I couldn’t find anything that fit me and had enough support for running. I continued through the department store-like aisles until I found the grocery section. This was a great adventure. The bulk food section had all kinds of mysterious, fascinating things. The rice was in huge, 4-foot plywood cubes. I saw 2-gallon jugs of peanut oil and soy sauce. I saw about a dozen varieties of honey from all kinds of different flowers I’ve never heard of (Matrimony Vine, Blessed Mother something-or-other, etc.). Amazing! The grocery also had live fish, but surprisingly a rather small produce section. Maybe this means that people tend to buy their produce from outdoor markets where it’s fresher.
I bought a kind of Chinese candy apple, which was pieces of fruit on a stick, all covered with a passionfruit-y crunchy candy. Then I wandered back to the race area to see the finish. Our Mengoni guys were doing fine; I saw Eugene covering some moves, and Alberto cruising near the front. (He was trying to get in promising breaks all day, but wasn’t lucky with the ones he picked.) Amaurys won one intermediate sprint, which he went for just to test his legs. He got boxed in the finish, but 3 guys had escaped just a few seconds off the front in the last half lap, so the podium was sealed anyway.
There were huge crowd of people watching the race, which was really cool to see. They were held in place by police tape stretched between cones, but nobody tried to push in to get a better view.
There was a guy selling roasted corn, and another guy (with a wheeled cart onto which was attached a crude brazier made of a metal drum) selling roasted sweet potatoes. We bought some of each (I got charged more than Pollo when I went back a little later to buy more…an interesting phenomenon that we’d already noted in the Dominican Republic, but I was surprised to see here where Pollo’s as much a foreigner as me; maybe it’s a blue-eyed surcharge).
After the guys had recovered for 15 minutes or so and changed their clothes, we got ready to go. There were still a lot of bottles of sports drink provided by the race (it’s called Pocari Sweat, a name that would create a big obstacle to its successful sale in the US, I reckon). I offered them to the crowd, which was staring from behind the barricade in interest at the post-race happenings. At first no one held out his hand to accept the bottled drink, and I wondered if I were offending the crowd by offering it, even if it was sponsor product. But, finally, one smiling face separated itself from the crowd and its owner held out her hand; once the ice was broken, more and more hands came out to accept the sports drink. But how different from anywhere else I’ve been, where there would be shoving and pushing and yelling. The Chinese spectators were mostly silent, and rather unsmiling, but I still got the impression that they were enjoying the spectacle of the race.
Meanwhile, some women dressed in ragged clothes were collecting the empty cardboard boxes that the drinks had arrived in, and the empty bottles as well. They looked completely thrilled with this unexpected windfall, and we helped them collect up the “garbage” before we left. This country strikes me as so efficient – light years from the wantonly wasteful United States. I know there are so many negative consequences, environmental and other, of the huge economic boom in China in the last decade, but in lots of ways (at least on the surface, to my ignorant eye) the country seems to be tucking in the loose ends in a remarkably tidy way.
Waiting for the bus to pull out, I snapped photos from the window: a cobbler with his tools spread on a small tarp on the sidewalk; a woman pedaling a tricycle loaded with produce. (We also caught Cacoñema urinating on the street again, which we snapped on camera in our small act of revenge for his jerkiness.)
I was completely exhausted in the bus on the way home…I guess the jet lag works insidiously for a while after sleeping through the night is no longer a big hurdle. But when we got back to the hotel, I didn’t take a nap but instead worked on changing Pollo’s place ticket to return to the U.S. We still don’t have a real plan of what to do when the race is over, but we kind of like flying by the seat of our pants, and I’m sure we’ll work something out. I was frustrated by the slow internet connection, though…we’d been very happy to hear that the hotel offered free Ethernet, but in reality my connection was poor, and it was an exercise in patience to try and make a call on Skype, or upload my photos to the blog.
Pollo came back to the room after cleaning the bikes to tell me he’d seen a coconut stand. So we went down to walk around a bit. The area right outside the hotel was a really lively shopping center, and it was really fun to wander around at dusk when the lights were starting to come on.
There were tiny shops everywhere: really just open-fronted booths stuffed with merchandise: clothing, mostly, and beauty products, and bags, umbrellas, and belts and hair accessories. Pollo bought a “Levi Strauss” belt as he’d forgotten his and his jeans were falling down. Accustomed as I am to shopping in the U.S., I never would have thought to bargain, but to Pollo it was second nature, and he talked the proprietor of the mini-store down 50 yuan.
I went in a shoe store to see the merchandise more closely. Everything looked a lot like what you’d see in an American mall, at least from a distance of a few feet. Once you got closer, though, the extremely inexpensive prices made more sense, as it became clear that everything was a knock-off of brand name shoes. There were Vans look-alikes called “Valens” or something like that. Then there were also ones with real“Vans” labels. Once you picked them up, you could tell that the quality was not as good as the “real deal,” but the resemblance was amazing. It struck me that this is how Chinese manufacturers have become some of the most competitive in the world: start by copying the look of a known brand, and then gradually increase the quality of the copy while retaining the price-consciousness that made the first attempt so cheap.
We saw fake Oakley backpacks, fake Gucci belts…and all at prices that make the tourist with money in his pocket laugh in happy disbelief. Most of the people walking about were very stylish: what I mean is that their style is identical to what you’d see walking around New York. Boots are very big with the women here – almost all of them seem to be wearing either knee boots or smaller ones. The boots I’ve seen for sale, with plastic soles and high heels, don’t look like they’d last more than 10 minutes walking, but all the women here look very fashionable and I haven’t seen any broken heels yet.
There were a lot of people walking around, shopping, eating, and just hanging out. In fact, it struck me that this city – supposedly a rather soulless industrial and business (according to my Eyewitness Travel Guide) – is one of the most vibrant centers of urban life that I’ve ever seen. Even New York City, on a Monday evening at least, doesn’t have the bustle of this little corner of Shenzhen. (Maybe Times Square, but that’s all tourists, and we were the only non-Chinese that I saw here; I assume they live here but could be wrong.)
Even from our room when we finally returned, I could hear music coming up from the street, and see the lights of a small fair (complete with Ferris wheel) a few blocks away. I wonder if some of this extra excitement is due to its being Christmas Eve. When we went to dinner, the PA system (which here in China, thankfully, has been playing unadorned classical music instead of the synthesizer junk we endured in the Sha Tin hotel) was interrupted by a special live performance. A group of about 20 young people dressed in white robes and Santa hats sang “Jingle Bells,” “Silent Night,” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Their musicality wasn’t amazing, but the intent made me smile…and even tear up a little bit. It’s hard to even remember that it’s Christmas since we’re so caught up in the race and the foreignness of China. But when we wake up tomorrow, it’ll be December 25th.
Wilson left after dinner to catch his taxi back to Hong Kong. He’d succeeded in changing his flight for tomorrow (Christmas Day), but didn’t want to risk delays at the checkpoints and so elected to leave tonight. We’ll miss him – who are we going to tease relentlessly now? Oh…and I forgot to pay up for losing the Scrabble bet…but I’m sure Wilson will remember. I can hear him now in a month, “!Oye chica! !Todavia me debe el dinero del Scrabble!”
The 4 buses carrying all the riders, plus the container truck with the bikes, had a police escort all the way to the start. The drive was interesting – we saw lots of huge apartment buildings where it appeared to be washday on Monday, as every single balcony was hung with rows of drying apparel. It’s funny how the small, common things are sometimes the most fascinating to the foreign eye! The driving (which, incidentally, is on the right side of the road as opposed to the left as in Hong Kong) is much more chaotic and aggressive here in China. Our bus driver wore our ears out with loud, prolonged honking, and had to throw the brakes on violently a few times as cars cut in front of him.
The riders’ area at the start was a barricaded area with a tent for each team. I am getting more and more impressed by the organization of this event; while it’s true that there’s a lot of “Hurry up and wait,” the race organizers are doing a tremendous job of getting people and equipment from one spot to another with a relatively small amount of hassle and almost no error. Also, the rider area was secured by police, and legions of red-jacketed workers with “Longhua volunteers” logos stitched on their caps ran around lugging water, manning the Port-A-Potties, etc. It seems that there’s a huge amount of national, regional, and local pride.
The course was a nearly flat loop of 4 kilometers on the streets of Shenzhen Longhua. Once the racers were off, I wandered around for a bit to explore. I went into a bank to try and change Hong Kong dollars into Chinese yuan. I asked someone for an English-speaking clerk, and was led graciously from one person to another until someone who could help me was found. After so much helpful effort on my behalf I felt bad to change me mind, but the pageful of information I would have had to fill out looked so daunting that I decided to forget the money changing for now. Bigger establishments (like the massage place from last night) accept HK dollars anyway, and it would only be for small stuff that it would be useful to have yuan.
I continued to a big supermarket, thinking of buying some running shoes so I could do some jogging from time to time (there’s no time to go for a ride, and my legs and back are starting to ache from lack of exercise). However, I couldn’t find anything that fit me and had enough support for running. I continued through the department store-like aisles until I found the grocery section. This was a great adventure. The bulk food section had all kinds of mysterious, fascinating things. The rice was in huge, 4-foot plywood cubes. I saw 2-gallon jugs of peanut oil and soy sauce. I saw about a dozen varieties of honey from all kinds of different flowers I’ve never heard of (Matrimony Vine, Blessed Mother something-or-other, etc.). Amazing! The grocery also had live fish, but surprisingly a rather small produce section. Maybe this means that people tend to buy their produce from outdoor markets where it’s fresher.
I bought a kind of Chinese candy apple, which was pieces of fruit on a stick, all covered with a passionfruit-y crunchy candy. Then I wandered back to the race area to see the finish. Our Mengoni guys were doing fine; I saw Eugene covering some moves, and Alberto cruising near the front. (He was trying to get in promising breaks all day, but wasn’t lucky with the ones he picked.) Amaurys won one intermediate sprint, which he went for just to test his legs. He got boxed in the finish, but 3 guys had escaped just a few seconds off the front in the last half lap, so the podium was sealed anyway.
There were huge crowd of people watching the race, which was really cool to see. They were held in place by police tape stretched between cones, but nobody tried to push in to get a better view.
There was a guy selling roasted corn, and another guy (with a wheeled cart onto which was attached a crude brazier made of a metal drum) selling roasted sweet potatoes. We bought some of each (I got charged more than Pollo when I went back a little later to buy more…an interesting phenomenon that we’d already noted in the Dominican Republic, but I was surprised to see here where Pollo’s as much a foreigner as me; maybe it’s a blue-eyed surcharge).
After the guys had recovered for 15 minutes or so and changed their clothes, we got ready to go. There were still a lot of bottles of sports drink provided by the race (it’s called Pocari Sweat, a name that would create a big obstacle to its successful sale in the US, I reckon). I offered them to the crowd, which was staring from behind the barricade in interest at the post-race happenings. At first no one held out his hand to accept the bottled drink, and I wondered if I were offending the crowd by offering it, even if it was sponsor product. But, finally, one smiling face separated itself from the crowd and its owner held out her hand; once the ice was broken, more and more hands came out to accept the sports drink. But how different from anywhere else I’ve been, where there would be shoving and pushing and yelling. The Chinese spectators were mostly silent, and rather unsmiling, but I still got the impression that they were enjoying the spectacle of the race.
Meanwhile, some women dressed in ragged clothes were collecting the empty cardboard boxes that the drinks had arrived in, and the empty bottles as well. They looked completely thrilled with this unexpected windfall, and we helped them collect up the “garbage” before we left. This country strikes me as so efficient – light years from the wantonly wasteful United States. I know there are so many negative consequences, environmental and other, of the huge economic boom in China in the last decade, but in lots of ways (at least on the surface, to my ignorant eye) the country seems to be tucking in the loose ends in a remarkably tidy way.
Waiting for the bus to pull out, I snapped photos from the window: a cobbler with his tools spread on a small tarp on the sidewalk; a woman pedaling a tricycle loaded with produce. (We also caught Cacoñema urinating on the street again, which we snapped on camera in our small act of revenge for his jerkiness.)
I was completely exhausted in the bus on the way home…I guess the jet lag works insidiously for a while after sleeping through the night is no longer a big hurdle. But when we got back to the hotel, I didn’t take a nap but instead worked on changing Pollo’s place ticket to return to the U.S. We still don’t have a real plan of what to do when the race is over, but we kind of like flying by the seat of our pants, and I’m sure we’ll work something out. I was frustrated by the slow internet connection, though…we’d been very happy to hear that the hotel offered free Ethernet, but in reality my connection was poor, and it was an exercise in patience to try and make a call on Skype, or upload my photos to the blog.
Pollo came back to the room after cleaning the bikes to tell me he’d seen a coconut stand. So we went down to walk around a bit. The area right outside the hotel was a really lively shopping center, and it was really fun to wander around at dusk when the lights were starting to come on.
There were tiny shops everywhere: really just open-fronted booths stuffed with merchandise: clothing, mostly, and beauty products, and bags, umbrellas, and belts and hair accessories. Pollo bought a “Levi Strauss” belt as he’d forgotten his and his jeans were falling down. Accustomed as I am to shopping in the U.S., I never would have thought to bargain, but to Pollo it was second nature, and he talked the proprietor of the mini-store down 50 yuan.
I went in a shoe store to see the merchandise more closely. Everything looked a lot like what you’d see in an American mall, at least from a distance of a few feet. Once you got closer, though, the extremely inexpensive prices made more sense, as it became clear that everything was a knock-off of brand name shoes. There were Vans look-alikes called “Valens” or something like that. Then there were also ones with real“Vans” labels. Once you picked them up, you could tell that the quality was not as good as the “real deal,” but the resemblance was amazing. It struck me that this is how Chinese manufacturers have become some of the most competitive in the world: start by copying the look of a known brand, and then gradually increase the quality of the copy while retaining the price-consciousness that made the first attempt so cheap.
We saw fake Oakley backpacks, fake Gucci belts…and all at prices that make the tourist with money in his pocket laugh in happy disbelief. Most of the people walking about were very stylish: what I mean is that their style is identical to what you’d see walking around New York. Boots are very big with the women here – almost all of them seem to be wearing either knee boots or smaller ones. The boots I’ve seen for sale, with plastic soles and high heels, don’t look like they’d last more than 10 minutes walking, but all the women here look very fashionable and I haven’t seen any broken heels yet.
There were a lot of people walking around, shopping, eating, and just hanging out. In fact, it struck me that this city – supposedly a rather soulless industrial and business (according to my Eyewitness Travel Guide) – is one of the most vibrant centers of urban life that I’ve ever seen. Even New York City, on a Monday evening at least, doesn’t have the bustle of this little corner of Shenzhen. (Maybe Times Square, but that’s all tourists, and we were the only non-Chinese that I saw here; I assume they live here but could be wrong.)
Even from our room when we finally returned, I could hear music coming up from the street, and see the lights of a small fair (complete with Ferris wheel) a few blocks away. I wonder if some of this extra excitement is due to its being Christmas Eve. When we went to dinner, the PA system (which here in China, thankfully, has been playing unadorned classical music instead of the synthesizer junk we endured in the Sha Tin hotel) was interrupted by a special live performance. A group of about 20 young people dressed in white robes and Santa hats sang “Jingle Bells,” “Silent Night,” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Their musicality wasn’t amazing, but the intent made me smile…and even tear up a little bit. It’s hard to even remember that it’s Christmas since we’re so caught up in the race and the foreignness of China. But when we wake up tomorrow, it’ll be December 25th.
Wilson left after dinner to catch his taxi back to Hong Kong. He’d succeeded in changing his flight for tomorrow (Christmas Day), but didn’t want to risk delays at the checkpoints and so elected to leave tonight. We’ll miss him – who are we going to tease relentlessly now? Oh…and I forgot to pay up for losing the Scrabble bet…but I’m sure Wilson will remember. I can hear him now in a month, “!Oye chica! !Todavia me debe el dinero del Scrabble!”
Race Start in Hong Kong and Transfer to Shenzhen
We had an early start, with instructions to have our luggage downstairs in the hotel lobby by 6:30 a.m. We were initially supposed to leave at 7:30 for the race start, but at breakfast were told to be ready at 7:10. I wasn’t quite able to organize myself by that time, but it turns out I needn’t have worried, as the buses didn’t depart until after 7:45 anyway. As Gus said early on, this race will be a lot about “Hurry up and wait.”
On the way, from the vantage point of the bus’s high windows, I took some photos of interesting things I saw. There was an open truck carrying some open plastic containers of some kind of food stuff. I snapped a photo, and the Chinese girls behind me on the bus giggled. I turned around, a little shame-faced, and showed them the photo, shrugging as if to say, “Hey – it’s interesting to me!” I am feeling like the much-maligned Japanese tourist with camera glued to his eye …but so many everyday things here are so different that they become worthy objects of photos to me.
At the race start in downtown Hong Kong at the HSBC building, it was a circus! The first 15 kilometers of the race would be neutral, meaning non-racing, and the reason for this was that these first miles – through the Harbor Tunnel and over a major bridge – would be open to 200 recreational riders in addition to the 96 racers. It was pretty fun to see the eager recreational riders lining up with their timing chips in place. A lot of these riders were on folding bikes with 20” wheels, and some had mountain bikes or very old road bikes. Some, on the other hand, were equipped with the latest and greatest in bicycle technology; the home of which is arguably right here in the South of China.
Unused as I am to the duties of soigneur (a term for the person who, literally “cares for” the riders on a team by attending to their nutritional and other requirements at the race), I was a little frazzled by trying to make sure everyone had everything they needed. By the time all the Mengoni boys were ready to go at the start line, I realized I really had to pee. I told Gus, who was driving the caravan car (loaned to us, incredibly, by our friends at Champion System), that I had to find a bathroom. If the caravan took off before I got back, well then I’d just have to stay at the start. I ran off, and got back just in time to clamber in the car before Gus peeled out behind the other cars.
It was my first experience riding in a caravan car, and it was pretty darn frightening…no offense to Gus’s driving, which was very skilled for sure. Since he’d given up our #9 caravan position to wait for me, he spent the entire 15K neutral section, plus a good part of the first lap, regaining our spot. Speeding past the recreational riders panting along was nerve-wracking, especially when there wasn’t much space to pass. It was cool to see the riders streaming along overpasses and through the tunnel, and it struck me what a big deal it is to hold this race here, in such a big city. I guess this was sort of analogous to NYC’s 5-Borough Bike Tour, or the NYC Triathlon, where the city allows major highways to be closed down for these special events.
The 8-kilometer circuit, which the race covered 7 times, had a few tough hills, the major one of which was over a kilometer in length. I had been hoping that all the sprinter boys on the team would be able to hang at least until the last time up the big hill; but I was saddened to see Pollo drop off early on, along with another rider from Macau, I think. I tried to cheer him on, but once the legs are done, they’re done. The rest of the race was a bit dispiriting for me, but I tried to pay attention to the information we were getting over the race radio and note the numbers of the riders in breakaways. Eugene had been the first one to attack, and threw a few more challenges out during the course of the race. Unfortunately he didn’t make it into the move he created, because it ended up staying away (with 4 riders) for the win. Wilson had been fighting hard to stay with the peloton up the hills, but finally on the 5th lap he was popped too. We hoped he would be able to stay within the time limit riding on his own.
After the race, we piled back into the bus to return to the hotel in Sha Tin; just for showers, lunch, and loading the bikes for the journey to Shenzhen. So that our riders could go up to the rooms and relax a bit, I promised to stay outside with the bikes until they were loaded onto the truck. This was a long wait. The race organization had procured a 40-foot container, and basically the whole race minus the people would be transported in this container. It took a few willing workers quite a while to rearrange the bike boxes and other boxes of equipment enough to fit 96+ bikes in the container. They basically just crammed all the bikes in – most of which had hurriedly been protected with foam tubing over the frames – and relied on the lack of space to keep the bikes from bouncing around.
We’d each been issued a lunch box to eat while on the bus, and the food ended up being quite a source of entertainment as well as sustenance. There was a whole roasted duck leg each, a hot dog, a ham & cheese sandwich, a tangerine packaged in plastic, and other little treats. I don’t know what possessed me to look at the list of ingredients on the orange drink box, but I exploded into laughter when I read, last on the list, “Contains fish products.” I can’t decide whether that was an editing error, or whether the orange drink really had something fishy in it!
One of the European riders (nationality and team affiliation withheld to avoid getting spit upon later) was terribly rude to one of the young Chinese Champion System riders. This young guy had washed his bike clothes after the stage, and had hung the wet spandex on hangers over his bus seat to dry during the trip. This Euro hotshot (who had been in the break in today’s stage) said loudly, pointing at the clothes down the aisle, “That’s disgusting.” He then poked the kid and said, “You, hey, put those in there; yeah, thank you,” tossing a plastic bag at him. We were horrified by his arrogance – especially since he had just returned to the bus after an egregiously obvious public urination. Digusting, indeed! From then on we turned firmly against this jerk, giving him the nickname of “Cacoñema.” If you want to know what it means, you’ll have to ask a Dominican, but suffice to say that it references his skinhead, and it’s kind of rude.
On the bus ride to Shenzhen, we saw lots and lots of macaques in a little forest on the side of the road. (And we had been so excited to see the one in Tam Pak Chung!) The ride was long (over 2 hours with all the traffic). We also had to cross the border into China. This involved everyone exiting the buses at one checkpoint and showing passports and visas. Then we got on the bus again, rolled a few hundred meters, and everyone had to disembark again, this time with all our bags, to pass customs. The forms they gave us on the bus to fill out were kind of excessive: we had to fill in the same information about 3 times on different pieces of paper. The health quarantine questionnaire was kind of funny in the wording; we were asked to check the appropriate box if we had a cough, sore throat, rash, or “snivel.”
We couldn’t see much from the bus, and the sky was very overcast and gloomy again. Everyone was glad to finally arrive in Shenzhen. We tumbled out into the courtyard of the hotel and eventually trailed gratefully up to our rooms.
We were all pretty downcast after a first stage in which 2 Mengoni riders had been dropped, and for the first time our table wasn’t the loudest-laughing one in the buffet hall. But the food was excellent – much more exciting than at the Sha Tin hotel. The hotel staff is also exceptionally attentive and polite here. There’s an attendant on each floor to help with elevator calls, luggage, etc., and they are all smiling and helpful.
After dinner, we decided to take advantage of the inexpensive massage service right next door to the hotel that Gus had scoped out. Apparently it was 198 yuan for a 2-hour massage, or less than $25. Pollo and I decided we’d like an hour each, but when we arrived and were ushered in by a beautifully-dressed young woman, we had some difficulty explaining our wishes. English speakers seem quite scarce in Shenzhen, unlike in Hong Kong, so my pantomiming is getting some practice. They seemed to be telling us that a one-hour massage was not possible; that it was 2 hours or nothing. I wanted to ask them if Pollo and I could get our massages in the same room, which I thought I’d succeeded in making clear. But then they tried to separate us, which Pollo was having none of. Finally, I understood that we were being separated just to undress and shower, and we’d meet up again after that. When we saw each other again a few minutes later, we were dressed in matching pyjama – type suits and foam rubber sandals. We followed our guide to a room where there were 2 massage beds. Then there commenced a long and confusing discussion on what type of massage we wanted. I guess this massage parlor, like some others I’ve heard about, had a kind of subtle subtext in the massage menu; I’m certain there were other types of “massage” options that they were not able to overtly describe. I hoped that our arrival as a couple would preclude any notion that we wanted anything other than a standard muscular massage, because communicating about something that subtle in the most basic English that our masseuse had at her disposal would be a recipe for disaster.
We ended up having a very enjoyable massage by these two young women, who chattered the whole time, occasionally giggling and laughing. The one who spoke a bit of English asked us some questions about our stay in China and was very personable and friendly.
By that time it was late, and we returned to the hotel to learn the bad news that both Pollo and Wilson had been eliminated by the time cut and would not be allowed to race the next day. This was a real blow; especially for Wilson, who had hung on so long and only been dropped from the group on the second-to-last time up the big hill. We tried pleading with the commissaire, but he was completely unmoved. Since there were several other riders in the same position, he would have had to allow them all to race. Apparently, the race organizing committee even wanted to get the racers back in (since there were a few Chinese riders in the sad position of having been time cut); however, the comm’s word is law, and even the organizers couldn’t do anything about it. Maybe next year they’ll reconsider having a tough, hilly stage on the first day. What other stage race has the hardest day first?
Anyway, it was with low spirits that we finally fell, exhausted, into bed, to see if Shenzhen would show us a sunnier aspect in the morning.
On the way, from the vantage point of the bus’s high windows, I took some photos of interesting things I saw. There was an open truck carrying some open plastic containers of some kind of food stuff. I snapped a photo, and the Chinese girls behind me on the bus giggled. I turned around, a little shame-faced, and showed them the photo, shrugging as if to say, “Hey – it’s interesting to me!” I am feeling like the much-maligned Japanese tourist with camera glued to his eye …but so many everyday things here are so different that they become worthy objects of photos to me.
At the race start in downtown Hong Kong at the HSBC building, it was a circus! The first 15 kilometers of the race would be neutral, meaning non-racing, and the reason for this was that these first miles – through the Harbor Tunnel and over a major bridge – would be open to 200 recreational riders in addition to the 96 racers. It was pretty fun to see the eager recreational riders lining up with their timing chips in place. A lot of these riders were on folding bikes with 20” wheels, and some had mountain bikes or very old road bikes. Some, on the other hand, were equipped with the latest and greatest in bicycle technology; the home of which is arguably right here in the South of China.
Unused as I am to the duties of soigneur (a term for the person who, literally “cares for” the riders on a team by attending to their nutritional and other requirements at the race), I was a little frazzled by trying to make sure everyone had everything they needed. By the time all the Mengoni boys were ready to go at the start line, I realized I really had to pee. I told Gus, who was driving the caravan car (loaned to us, incredibly, by our friends at Champion System), that I had to find a bathroom. If the caravan took off before I got back, well then I’d just have to stay at the start. I ran off, and got back just in time to clamber in the car before Gus peeled out behind the other cars.
It was my first experience riding in a caravan car, and it was pretty darn frightening…no offense to Gus’s driving, which was very skilled for sure. Since he’d given up our #9 caravan position to wait for me, he spent the entire 15K neutral section, plus a good part of the first lap, regaining our spot. Speeding past the recreational riders panting along was nerve-wracking, especially when there wasn’t much space to pass. It was cool to see the riders streaming along overpasses and through the tunnel, and it struck me what a big deal it is to hold this race here, in such a big city. I guess this was sort of analogous to NYC’s 5-Borough Bike Tour, or the NYC Triathlon, where the city allows major highways to be closed down for these special events.
The 8-kilometer circuit, which the race covered 7 times, had a few tough hills, the major one of which was over a kilometer in length. I had been hoping that all the sprinter boys on the team would be able to hang at least until the last time up the big hill; but I was saddened to see Pollo drop off early on, along with another rider from Macau, I think. I tried to cheer him on, but once the legs are done, they’re done. The rest of the race was a bit dispiriting for me, but I tried to pay attention to the information we were getting over the race radio and note the numbers of the riders in breakaways. Eugene had been the first one to attack, and threw a few more challenges out during the course of the race. Unfortunately he didn’t make it into the move he created, because it ended up staying away (with 4 riders) for the win. Wilson had been fighting hard to stay with the peloton up the hills, but finally on the 5th lap he was popped too. We hoped he would be able to stay within the time limit riding on his own.
After the race, we piled back into the bus to return to the hotel in Sha Tin; just for showers, lunch, and loading the bikes for the journey to Shenzhen. So that our riders could go up to the rooms and relax a bit, I promised to stay outside with the bikes until they were loaded onto the truck. This was a long wait. The race organization had procured a 40-foot container, and basically the whole race minus the people would be transported in this container. It took a few willing workers quite a while to rearrange the bike boxes and other boxes of equipment enough to fit 96+ bikes in the container. They basically just crammed all the bikes in – most of which had hurriedly been protected with foam tubing over the frames – and relied on the lack of space to keep the bikes from bouncing around.
We’d each been issued a lunch box to eat while on the bus, and the food ended up being quite a source of entertainment as well as sustenance. There was a whole roasted duck leg each, a hot dog, a ham & cheese sandwich, a tangerine packaged in plastic, and other little treats. I don’t know what possessed me to look at the list of ingredients on the orange drink box, but I exploded into laughter when I read, last on the list, “Contains fish products.” I can’t decide whether that was an editing error, or whether the orange drink really had something fishy in it!
One of the European riders (nationality and team affiliation withheld to avoid getting spit upon later) was terribly rude to one of the young Chinese Champion System riders. This young guy had washed his bike clothes after the stage, and had hung the wet spandex on hangers over his bus seat to dry during the trip. This Euro hotshot (who had been in the break in today’s stage) said loudly, pointing at the clothes down the aisle, “That’s disgusting.” He then poked the kid and said, “You, hey, put those in there; yeah, thank you,” tossing a plastic bag at him. We were horrified by his arrogance – especially since he had just returned to the bus after an egregiously obvious public urination. Digusting, indeed! From then on we turned firmly against this jerk, giving him the nickname of “Cacoñema.” If you want to know what it means, you’ll have to ask a Dominican, but suffice to say that it references his skinhead, and it’s kind of rude.
On the bus ride to Shenzhen, we saw lots and lots of macaques in a little forest on the side of the road. (And we had been so excited to see the one in Tam Pak Chung!) The ride was long (over 2 hours with all the traffic). We also had to cross the border into China. This involved everyone exiting the buses at one checkpoint and showing passports and visas. Then we got on the bus again, rolled a few hundred meters, and everyone had to disembark again, this time with all our bags, to pass customs. The forms they gave us on the bus to fill out were kind of excessive: we had to fill in the same information about 3 times on different pieces of paper. The health quarantine questionnaire was kind of funny in the wording; we were asked to check the appropriate box if we had a cough, sore throat, rash, or “snivel.”
We couldn’t see much from the bus, and the sky was very overcast and gloomy again. Everyone was glad to finally arrive in Shenzhen. We tumbled out into the courtyard of the hotel and eventually trailed gratefully up to our rooms.
We were all pretty downcast after a first stage in which 2 Mengoni riders had been dropped, and for the first time our table wasn’t the loudest-laughing one in the buffet hall. But the food was excellent – much more exciting than at the Sha Tin hotel. The hotel staff is also exceptionally attentive and polite here. There’s an attendant on each floor to help with elevator calls, luggage, etc., and they are all smiling and helpful.
After dinner, we decided to take advantage of the inexpensive massage service right next door to the hotel that Gus had scoped out. Apparently it was 198 yuan for a 2-hour massage, or less than $25. Pollo and I decided we’d like an hour each, but when we arrived and were ushered in by a beautifully-dressed young woman, we had some difficulty explaining our wishes. English speakers seem quite scarce in Shenzhen, unlike in Hong Kong, so my pantomiming is getting some practice. They seemed to be telling us that a one-hour massage was not possible; that it was 2 hours or nothing. I wanted to ask them if Pollo and I could get our massages in the same room, which I thought I’d succeeded in making clear. But then they tried to separate us, which Pollo was having none of. Finally, I understood that we were being separated just to undress and shower, and we’d meet up again after that. When we saw each other again a few minutes later, we were dressed in matching pyjama – type suits and foam rubber sandals. We followed our guide to a room where there were 2 massage beds. Then there commenced a long and confusing discussion on what type of massage we wanted. I guess this massage parlor, like some others I’ve heard about, had a kind of subtle subtext in the massage menu; I’m certain there were other types of “massage” options that they were not able to overtly describe. I hoped that our arrival as a couple would preclude any notion that we wanted anything other than a standard muscular massage, because communicating about something that subtle in the most basic English that our masseuse had at her disposal would be a recipe for disaster.
We ended up having a very enjoyable massage by these two young women, who chattered the whole time, occasionally giggling and laughing. The one who spoke a bit of English asked us some questions about our stay in China and was very personable and friendly.
By that time it was late, and we returned to the hotel to learn the bad news that both Pollo and Wilson had been eliminated by the time cut and would not be allowed to race the next day. This was a real blow; especially for Wilson, who had hung on so long and only been dropped from the group on the second-to-last time up the big hill. We tried pleading with the commissaire, but he was completely unmoved. Since there were several other riders in the same position, he would have had to allow them all to race. Apparently, the race organizing committee even wanted to get the racers back in (since there were a few Chinese riders in the sad position of having been time cut); however, the comm’s word is law, and even the organizers couldn’t do anything about it. Maybe next year they’ll reconsider having a tough, hilly stage on the first day. What other stage race has the hardest day first?
Anyway, it was with low spirits that we finally fell, exhausted, into bed, to see if Shenzhen would show us a sunnier aspect in the morning.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Sha Tin with a Brief Foray to Hong Kong Central
Sha Tin – Day 3
We woke around 7:30 and I checked out the morning view from our 8th floor window; over to a park with a temple-looking building with an enormous green hill behind. To the side of the hill are some high-rises, which frame the view in an odd and somewhat jarring way.
After breakfast, we went down to the “bike room” in the garage of the hotel to take the bikes out for a spin. Unfortunately, I had neglected to check if the bike the Champion System guys had loaned to me had been unloaded into the bike room. Since it had not been, I was out of luck and out of a bike to ride. (I had brought along my fixed-gear track bike, but after the generous offer from Louis to loan me a road bike, I had not put the track bike together and it was still in bits in its suitcase.) Deciding that by the time I’d put my bike together, the guys would probably have returned, I elected to just spend the morning organizing photos and working on the blog.
For those that know me well, this blogging thing may come as somewhat of a surprise. I have not generally been known as a technophile, and so the digital camera, laptop, and constant internet access which are all required for this effort to share my experience are things that are, in combination, quite new to me. Writing the blog is a good opportunity to reflect on each day, and distill the sights and other senses into a meaningful and accessible format. It will also be a wonderful gift to my future self; I have an appallingly poor long-term memory, so the photos and text of the blog will help me remember what I experienced.
Anyway, the morning was spent indoors, which depressed me a bit when I thought of all that’s to explore outside! However, I’ve decided that Pollo and I will spend a few days here when the race is over, at which point I can check out all the guide book highlights, as well as a few places interesting only to me because of my parents’ history here.
In the early afternoon, we assembled down in the hotel lobby to go to the press conference and team presentation at the HSBC headquarters in the center of Hong Kong. We clambered aboard a double-decker bus and proceeded on a very slow, traffic-delayed journey to the city center. Wow – what a difference from the other side of the island at Sai Kung. This place looks like New York’s skyscrapers were transplanted to San Francisco’s hilly neighborhoods. The high-rises shoot up from every hillside, and are so towering as to make even this city girl feel provincial!
We arrived with quite a bit of time to spare before the team presentation, and soon everyone needed the bathroom. As the fearless communicator of the group, I found myself trailed by six spandex-clad Mengoni riders as I searched out a toilet. We went downstairs from the bank’s main entrance to a room that had what looked like a giant safe opening in the far wall. Assuming we were in the wrong spot, I turned to go, but saw a guard so thought I’d ask her. She nodded in comprehension as I requested a toilet, and beckoned us to come with her over to a locked door. She used her key card to open the door, and waved us through. Eugene, the idiot, made some crack about robbing the bank, which made me want to crawl under the carpet with embarrassment, or perhaps instead shoot him. Anyway, we wandered around in the back halls (I think they were employee areas) for a while before we found the restrooms. When we came back out, the guard looked very relieved to see us; I’m sure she had been wondering what mischief we were getting up to back there.
The team presentation was fun as these things go; besides introducing all the HSBC honchos (sponsoring the race) and the cycling federation honchos (organizing the race), they had BMX riders doing tricks to liven things up. Afterwards, we were hustled back to the bus stop by a young Chinese woman with a perfect British accent, who apparently is working for the race organization. I find it interesting that there are many Chinese in Hong Kong who speak no English at all; many who speak it well but with a (Chinese accent; and some who speak it as if it were their first language (which perhaps it is). It is truly a bilingual city, in that most of the major commerce seems to be conducted in both English and Chinese.
Although we got into the city center today, I don’t feel that I got to know Hong Kong much better at all as a result. Like other big, important cities I’ve been to, it seems, on the surface, to be remarkably similar to other big cities. In other words, there’s less of a “foreign thrill” to the downtown; also it seems a bit impersonal. I hope to get a better feel for the place when we return at the end of the race.
I had my most interesting moments of exploration in the late afternoon, when I went out to buy laundry soap to do a load for the team. (The hotel offers a self-serve laundry service, but inexplicably does not have soap for sale.) After trying several places, and using charades to communicate my quest to Cantonese-speakers, I was directed by an English-speaking woman to a supermarket at the end of a pedestrian-only street. I wouldn’t have found the store on my own, as its entrance was completely unprepossessing; nothing like a grocery store in the U.S. Inside, the aisles were narrow and crowded, and the cashier line was long. I eventually made it out with my purchases and, while I was rearranging the bags in my hands, a sweet and obviously very healthy kitten ran up to me miaowing. I petted him for a while, then he ran back from whence he’d come; he seemed to live in a hardware store next to the grocery. This hardware store was amazing: tiny, and absolutely crammed to bursting with merchandise. There must have been some order to it all, but it was not evident to my untrained eye!
We had an early night, due to a 6 a.m. wake-up call in the morning before the race. Pollo and Amaurys were snoring by 8 p.m., and I am yawning over the computer here at 9. Tomorrow we race, and in the afternoon we’ll make the 2-hour bus transfer to Shenzhen. Mainland China, here we come!
We woke around 7:30 and I checked out the morning view from our 8th floor window; over to a park with a temple-looking building with an enormous green hill behind. To the side of the hill are some high-rises, which frame the view in an odd and somewhat jarring way.
After breakfast, we went down to the “bike room” in the garage of the hotel to take the bikes out for a spin. Unfortunately, I had neglected to check if the bike the Champion System guys had loaned to me had been unloaded into the bike room. Since it had not been, I was out of luck and out of a bike to ride. (I had brought along my fixed-gear track bike, but after the generous offer from Louis to loan me a road bike, I had not put the track bike together and it was still in bits in its suitcase.) Deciding that by the time I’d put my bike together, the guys would probably have returned, I elected to just spend the morning organizing photos and working on the blog.
For those that know me well, this blogging thing may come as somewhat of a surprise. I have not generally been known as a technophile, and so the digital camera, laptop, and constant internet access which are all required for this effort to share my experience are things that are, in combination, quite new to me. Writing the blog is a good opportunity to reflect on each day, and distill the sights and other senses into a meaningful and accessible format. It will also be a wonderful gift to my future self; I have an appallingly poor long-term memory, so the photos and text of the blog will help me remember what I experienced.
Anyway, the morning was spent indoors, which depressed me a bit when I thought of all that’s to explore outside! However, I’ve decided that Pollo and I will spend a few days here when the race is over, at which point I can check out all the guide book highlights, as well as a few places interesting only to me because of my parents’ history here.
In the early afternoon, we assembled down in the hotel lobby to go to the press conference and team presentation at the HSBC headquarters in the center of Hong Kong. We clambered aboard a double-decker bus and proceeded on a very slow, traffic-delayed journey to the city center. Wow – what a difference from the other side of the island at Sai Kung. This place looks like New York’s skyscrapers were transplanted to San Francisco’s hilly neighborhoods. The high-rises shoot up from every hillside, and are so towering as to make even this city girl feel provincial!
We arrived with quite a bit of time to spare before the team presentation, and soon everyone needed the bathroom. As the fearless communicator of the group, I found myself trailed by six spandex-clad Mengoni riders as I searched out a toilet. We went downstairs from the bank’s main entrance to a room that had what looked like a giant safe opening in the far wall. Assuming we were in the wrong spot, I turned to go, but saw a guard so thought I’d ask her. She nodded in comprehension as I requested a toilet, and beckoned us to come with her over to a locked door. She used her key card to open the door, and waved us through. Eugene, the idiot, made some crack about robbing the bank, which made me want to crawl under the carpet with embarrassment, or perhaps instead shoot him. Anyway, we wandered around in the back halls (I think they were employee areas) for a while before we found the restrooms. When we came back out, the guard looked very relieved to see us; I’m sure she had been wondering what mischief we were getting up to back there.
The team presentation was fun as these things go; besides introducing all the HSBC honchos (sponsoring the race) and the cycling federation honchos (organizing the race), they had BMX riders doing tricks to liven things up. Afterwards, we were hustled back to the bus stop by a young Chinese woman with a perfect British accent, who apparently is working for the race organization. I find it interesting that there are many Chinese in Hong Kong who speak no English at all; many who speak it well but with a (Chinese accent; and some who speak it as if it were their first language (which perhaps it is). It is truly a bilingual city, in that most of the major commerce seems to be conducted in both English and Chinese.
Although we got into the city center today, I don’t feel that I got to know Hong Kong much better at all as a result. Like other big, important cities I’ve been to, it seems, on the surface, to be remarkably similar to other big cities. In other words, there’s less of a “foreign thrill” to the downtown; also it seems a bit impersonal. I hope to get a better feel for the place when we return at the end of the race.
I had my most interesting moments of exploration in the late afternoon, when I went out to buy laundry soap to do a load for the team. (The hotel offers a self-serve laundry service, but inexplicably does not have soap for sale.) After trying several places, and using charades to communicate my quest to Cantonese-speakers, I was directed by an English-speaking woman to a supermarket at the end of a pedestrian-only street. I wouldn’t have found the store on my own, as its entrance was completely unprepossessing; nothing like a grocery store in the U.S. Inside, the aisles were narrow and crowded, and the cashier line was long. I eventually made it out with my purchases and, while I was rearranging the bags in my hands, a sweet and obviously very healthy kitten ran up to me miaowing. I petted him for a while, then he ran back from whence he’d come; he seemed to live in a hardware store next to the grocery. This hardware store was amazing: tiny, and absolutely crammed to bursting with merchandise. There must have been some order to it all, but it was not evident to my untrained eye!
We had an early night, due to a 6 a.m. wake-up call in the morning before the race. Pollo and Amaurys were snoring by 8 p.m., and I am yawning over the computer here at 9. Tomorrow we race, and in the afternoon we’ll make the 2-hour bus transfer to Shenzhen. Mainland China, here we come!
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